Like its counterpart Sketches by Boz, this book contains a series of miniature portraits of mid-19th-century England. Here Charles Dickens gives us a number of sketches of types of young gentlemen (the Bashful, the Very Friendly, the Political) and young couples (the Contradictory, the Cool, the Egotistical) with a variety of other short narratives, including "The Mudfrog Papers"—of which Oliver Twist is a continuation—and "Some Particulars Concerning a Lion." Playing on the contemporary public fascination with moral rules and codes of behavior, they are satirical caricatures, yet they also demonstrate Dickens' warmth toward humanity.